TOKYO (AP) _ One woman noticed the fidgety man across the aisle  and wondered why he was wearing gloves when the temperature outside  was 91 degrees. Another passenger saw him get up from his seat  aboard All Nippon Airways Flight 61 and figured he had a complaint.  

Then the man pulled an 8-inch knife on a flight attendant on the  upper deck of the Boeing 747, stormed the cockpit and slashed the  pilot to death in Japan's first deadly hijacking.  

Forty-nine minutes later, the jumbo jet returned to Tokyo's  Haneda Airport and landed safely with the 516 other people aboard  uninjured.  

The hijacker, an unemployed man, told police he was a fan of  computer flight-simulation games and wanted to fly a real plane, a  Haneda police official said on customary condition of anonymity.  

When the man hustled the attendant down the aisle, ``I was  afraid to look at his face because he might say, `What are you  looking at?' and take a stab at me,'' said a 61-year-old passenger  who only identified himself by his last name, Okawa.  

Once inside the cockpit, the hijacker forced the co-pilot out  and ordered the pilot to steer toward the U.S. military's Yokota  Air Base in western Tokyo, the police official said.  

When the pilot refused, the hijacker stabbed him in the neck and  seized the controls.  

The plane suddenly lost altitude after the hijacker burst into  the cockpit, passengers said. At one point, the plane descended  2,000 feet in five minutes, to 1,000 feet above the ground, the  Transportation Ministry said.  

``I really thought this was it,'' said Yasuhiro Fukuda, a  42-year-old musician.  

Unnerved by the drop in altitude, the co-pilot and another ANA  pilot who happened to be aboard burst into the cockpit and pounced  on the hijacker.  

Others helped tie him up with neckties and belts while the  off-duty pilot took the controls.  

The hijacker, 28-year-old Yuji Nishizawa, was arrested after the  plane landed, said Norio Chichi, deputy police chief at Haneda  Airport.  

The pilot, Naoyuki Nagashima, 51, was pronounced dead by a  doctor on board shortly after Flight 61 landed, Transportation  Ministry official Satoshi Iwamura said.  

The government tightened security at airports across Japan and  launched an investigation into how the suspect got a knife aboard.  

Accounts from the cabin depict a flight thrown into quiet terror  once the hijacker pulled out his knife.  

``Take me to the cockpit,'' Chichi quoted Nishizawa as saying to  the flight attendant minutes after takeoff for Sapporo, in northern  Japan.  

The crew told passengers the plane had been hijacked and urged  them to remain quiet. They showed videos of the popular ``Pokemon''  cartoon to keep children from panicking, passengers said.  

A home video shot in the cabin during the hijacking showed  people sitting quietly. Passengers later praised the crew's efforts  to reassure them.  

``I was shocked when I learned that the pilot was killed,'' said  Miharu Hondo, who was on vacation. ``When we saw a doctor coming  into the plane, I thought maybe someone was hurt during the  hijacking. But I didn't imagine that anyone had died.''  

The hijacker apparently just wanted to try some aerial tricks  involving the majestic span across Tokyo Bay.  

``I wanted to fly under the Rainbow Bridge and make a loop,''  Kyodo News agency quoted him as telling police.  

Other reports said he suffered from depression.  

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sent condolences to the pilot's  family. ANA's president apologized.  

Passengers said there were signs the hijacker was troubled  before he pulled out his knife. One told NHK, the national TV  network, that he saw the man leave his seat and speak quietly to a  flight attendant before seizing her.  

Yoshiko Kawase, 60, said she noticed the man while he was still  in his seat because he appeared nervous and was wearing dirty white  cotton gloves.  

She heard someone ``shouting in a threatening voice'' in the  cockpit but could not understand what he was saying.  

The pilot's slaying was the first for a passenger or crew member  in Japan's 20 hijackings since 1970, Transportation Ministry  official Fumihiko Oinuma said.  

The last hijacking in Japan was on Jan. 20, 1997, when a man  armed with a kitchen knife commandeered a flight from Osaka to the  southern city of Fukuoka.  

He was arrested shortly after the plane landed in Fukuoka. No  one was injured.